Wynyard grew out of the settlement around Big Quill Lake, where many of the first settlers were of Icelandic origin. The block of Icelandic homesteads was known as the Vatnabyggd settlement, and its centre of community life was Sleipnir, a store and post office northeast of where the town now stands. In 1908 Sleipnir was moved into Wynyard.
The first Icelandic settlers were soon followed by Ukrainian settlers, and then by British, Polish and German families. Early schooling happened in one-room schoolhouses, among them Wynyard School District #2499 and Nordra School #1947. When Nordra was built in 1907, it offered a course in Icelandic, since school rules of the day allowed an hour each afternoon, from 3 to 4 pm, for foreign language instruction.
The Canadian Pacific Railway made Wynyard a divisional point when it came through. The railway station, built in 1909, no longer sees passengers but is a designated heritage site, as are the 1927 court house and the Federated Church of 1921. Today a downtown museum on Avenue B keeps local artefacts and photographs, and the town sits on the Yellowhead Highway just south of Big Quill Lake.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Wynyard, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.